Startups Manic Mondays: Support To Get You Through The Week: Share What You Need Help With, Job Postings, For Hire Offers, or Resources |
- Manic Mondays: Support To Get You Through The Week: Share What You Need Help With, Job Postings, For Hire Offers, or Resources
- How to find your first 500 beta users without spending money
- I'm CTO of a startup, my CEO has recently had me start signing more and more contracts for Engineering work etc. Is there anything I need to do to ensure I'm not personally liable if he suddenly decides that despite my signature the company did not "approve" the contract?
- Equity for a guy about to leave for B-school in an early stage startup.
- Chief Of Staff role?
- What questions should I ask a startup to get an idea of how mature/risky they are?
- Growing and I’m not sure how to handle additional help
- Successful entrepreneurs of reddit: how did you beta feedback go?
- How to get on the front-page of Hacker News
- New startup ideas: Give up or start all over again?
- What would you say to someone wanting to start but do not know how and what exactly?
| Posted: 30 Mar 2020 06:07 AM PDT Welcome to this week's Support Thread. Please refer to the below suggested formats to get the most out of this thread. Need Support?Please use the following format to seek support: SUPPORT REQUESTWhat I am working on: What I need support with: Why I need support with this: My questions to the community: Requested Resources: Relevant URL: [if applicable] Additional Comments: Please add any additional comments that may provide more context around what you need support with so others can provide the most relevant support or guidance to you. Job Provider?Please use the following format to post a job listing: HIRING Company Name and URL: Job Title/Role: Employment Type: [Intern] [Contract] [Part Time] [Full Time] [Remote] Job Description/Responsibilities: Necessary Skills and Experience: Requested, but not necessary Skills and Experience: Job Compensation: Willing to Relocate New Hire: [yes] [no] Job Listing URL: Additional Comments: Please add any additional comments that may provide more context around the job listing to make it easier for the right people to apply.Job Seeker?Please use the following format to post an offer to work : FOR HIRE Title/Role: Desired Location: Willing to Relocate: [yes] [no] Remote Availability: [yes] [no] Relevant Skills and Experience: Requested Salary/Hourly Rate: Resume/Portfolio URL: Additional Comments: Please add any additional comments that may provide more context around the job listing to make it easier for the right people to apply.Resource Provider?Please use the following format to post an offer to work : RESOURCE Organization Name and URL: Location Served: Resource Name: Resource Description: Resource URL: Resource Cost: Do not forget to explore the /r/startups discord. We have many relevant channels to seek support, post job listings, share for hire offers, and share resources. You can also find more support using instant chat on the /r/startups discord. [link] [comments]  |
| How to find your first 500 beta users without spending money Posted: 30 Mar 2020 03:06 PM PDT Hey there! I've written a blogpost on how to find your first hundred beta users when you don't have money to spend on marketing. Hope it can help a few here! When you're finally launching your beta and have an MVP, your next step is finding users to try out your beta product, play around with it, criticize it, give you feedback: they're your beta testers. And they're an essential part of your startup journey. But you're new at this. You have no money to spend on marketing. So how do you "manually" find you first hundred beta users? Below is a compiled list of tools, tips and platforms we used with our startup (focused on privacy) that helped us find our first users and build an awesome community of beta users. Hope this can help you out! -REDDIT: Reddit is a great platform with a gigantic amount of people, divided into lots of different subreddits. You can find everything on Reddit. A good way to start is to join a few subreddits that correspond to your first targeted niche markets for your product. This obviously depends on your sector/industry (although you can join these subreddits regardless for a start: r/betatests r/alphaandbetausers, r/testmyapp). Think about which groups your audience would go to, or where your competitors are. Bear in mind though, that promoting your product may be against the rules or frowned upon in some subreddits, and in that case if you do so you may get some hostility. Read the rules, you can also message the moderators if you're unsure. At the very least, be honest about promoting your product, ask for genuine feedback. I'd also recommend giving some value to the community, by sharing useful content, or helping out. Reddit is a great informative platform with a lot of smart redditors: you can really get a lot of value from it. -HACKER NEWS: Another big platform with a tech savyy audience. If you get on the landing page it's thousand of views. Check it out and see how it works before posting anything. There's a specific section called "Show HN" where you can "share something that you've made". Would highly recommend it, you may not only get a lot of traffic, but also very useful feedback. Bear in mind that, similar to Reddit, the feedback is usually brutally honest. Learning to differentiate useful and constructive feedback from "haters" takes some practice. Additionally, if you have a blog you can post your blogposts there. -PRODUCT HUNT: Product Hunt is a website that lets users share and discover new products. It allows early stage startups to promote their products. Posting your product there is a great way to get traction (the more upvotes you get, the bigger the chance to feature on the landing page, and that's a lot of views), potential beta users, and feedback. The community is full of enthusiastic tech people. Apparently the best time to post is around 10am CET on a Tuesday or Wednesday (based on the particular cycle product hunt has in place), but that's up for debate. We posted on a Wednesday morning and it worked out very well for us. -CONTENT MARKETING: Start a blog. Write. Make videos. If you've developed your product you must have good knowledge of your industry. Share that knowledge with your audience. Write stuff that gives value to your relevant community, that can be useful and informative. Show you're an expert in your industry. For example, we recently started a blog where the idea is to regularly publish content on privacy, tips on how to increase your online privacy, what a hacker is, etc. We are planning on releasing interactive videos as well. People will appreciate your informative (and fun) content, it gives you legitimacy, and that way you may start building a solid base of loyal followers. Post that content on social media (your personal and company Twitter profile, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook with relevant groups,...): post relevant content to attract audience. Sharable content can go viral. -BETA WEBSITES: There are a few websites that allow you to post your app/product in beta (e.g. Betalist, which is free). -FORUMS: Look for online forums and discussions that may be relevant for you. -QUORA: Very big platform. Help out the community by answering questions that people may have in your sector. That can also get you a lot of views. -SHAPR: A "professional tinder" app, that allows you to interact with people based on your selected key words. May be worth giving it a try. We've definitely managed to meet a few of our beta testers there. It can take a while though, as you're not posting to a large audience, instead it's more of a chat app. This can be a good thing when you're looking for your very first beta users. -INFLUENCERS: As for most things, network is everything. There are most probably influencers/bloggers in your industry with a large community of followers. Connect with them. See how you can help each other out. -EVENTS: Go to as many events as you can (events related to your industry, startup events, pitch events,..). Obviously the quantity and quality of events available to you largely depend on where you live. If you live in a capital, e.g. London, you're in a great place to connect with important people and prospective users. You may find these events on the Meetup app, or with a simple Google search. Don't understestimate how useful these events can be! Important connections can be made, and a lot of people will get even more excited to use your product when they meet you in person. Also, I'd recommed you pitch as much as you can, especially when you reach this stage. Pitching can be very beneficial, it allows you to 1)grow in confidence about your product and yourself in public, which is super important, 2)understand the recurrent questions people have about your business, which helps you with perfecting your message, how you communicate your product with the world, marketing, and feedback, 3) make yourself known. We've been to a few pitching events and it has considerably helped us find users, influencers, potential investors, and meet some amazing people. Voila! These are some of the tools/platforms/methods we've used so far, that have allowed us to grow an awesome community of beta users! No money has been spent on marketing so far. It is, of course, still early stage for us, since we're still in beta. We hope this can help you somehow! What about you? Which platforms or tools have worked out for you? I'll be regularly posting on our startup experiences here if interested. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Mar 2020 10:12 AM PDT Maybe this is a completely irrational fear, but I just today signed two contracts committing the company to over 100k. Someone I spoke to suggested I get personal professional liability insurance, but that's the first time I've ever heard of anything like that. Thoughts? Edit: we're located in NYC as Inc Edit2: got the board of directors to authorize me as a signatory! Much relieved. Thanks for the quick responses people. [link] [comments]  |
| Equity for a guy about to leave for B-school in an early stage startup. Posted: 31 Mar 2020 02:51 AM PDT So our startup is currently early stage. We've launched an alpha and are currently in the process of building out our beta in response to the feedback. Our product is a social network of sorts for which we're building out a mobile app. Now we hope to wrap up our beta in a couple of months immediately after which our backend engineer is off to B-school for two years (let's call him John). We haven't really gotten down to discussing equity splits but I think the time to put things to paper will come soon. John has been amazing at his work but from the looks of it John is not considering letting go of his B-school ticket. to put things into perspective this is one of the most prestigious B-schools in the world. John promises to work part time from B-school but given the intensity of B-school, I doubt he's going to be able to especially from a coding capacity. If we're not able to convince him to stay, how do we handle the rewards part? From all the stuff i've read up online I've surmised this : no risk? no equity. How do I handle this situation in the most equitable manner? TLDR : startup member wants to go the B-school immediately post beta launch but still might be expecting some equity. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Mar 2020 09:23 PM PDT What does the Chief of Staff role at a start-up look like? For reference, the post-series B start-up is valued at >$80m and has a CEO, CFO, CTO, and VPs of Engineering and Sales. There is one finance and purchasing manager who handles administrative things. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| What questions should I ask a startup to get an idea of how mature/risky they are? Posted: 30 Mar 2020 05:29 PM PDT If I am interviewing with a startup, I would like to understand how established they are, so I can know what I'm getting into risk-wise. I was thinking of asking how many rounds of funding they've been through, is that a good way to gauge the risk level? [link] [comments]  |
| Growing and I’m not sure how to handle additional help Posted: 30 Mar 2020 06:48 PM PDT I currently have a web design LLC that I run with a co-founder. We are 50/50 and have been in business together for 6 good years. We recently came up with a great idea that we have found a market for, however we are too busy to sell it. We found someone excited and willing to sell it for us but they want 25% of the income which we agreed to. How do I handle this person? Are they considered an independent contractor at that point? We have had it easy as a two member LLC so I'm kind of lost on how to handle this person. We don't want to add them to the LLC if possible since we run various projects under the LLC. An additional programmer is also interested for 10% of income. Can I keep my LLC intact the way it is and just give the sales person and programmer their share of the income? Collect W9s and send 1099s? Thank you very much for any info and help! [link] [comments]  |
| Successful entrepreneurs of reddit: how did you beta feedback go? Posted: 30 Mar 2020 10:59 AM PDT Definition of successful: If you made a profit, even a single dollar then I'd consider you a successful. How were the first round of feedback like?/ What were the negative feedback like? What was your initial feedback process like? Did you send surveys? Or personally pinged users with specific questions? When did you decide that you're done with beta rounds? Was there a percent of positive feedback or was it until a 0% negative feedback? [link] [comments]  |
| How to get on the front-page of Hacker News Posted: 30 Mar 2020 04:52 PM PDT Hey Everyone, We recently got our startup #1 on the front page of Hacker News. I wrote a twitter 🧵 and wanted to share it here. Hopefully, some of you find it useful and can get your product on the front-page too.
We would not be where we are without their early feedback. We constantly talked to our users, asking if they found value in our product, if they would keep using it, what would they like to see and iterated based on that feedback. 3) Launch repeatedly 5) Make sure your server can handle the traffic 6) Collect emails Launch Day:
And that's all we really did. I believe if it worked for us and many others, it will work for you. Good luck! [link] [comments]  |
| New startup ideas: Give up or start all over again? Posted: 30 Mar 2020 03:37 PM PDT I'm a journalist. I've been reading different opinions and sources regarding whether you should leverage these times to develop your startup ideas or give them up completely. So far, this article makes the most sense to me because it advises preparing for the worse if you continue to move forward with your business idea and trying to find VC. More optimistic approaches like this one, suggest that the time to polish your deck and your financial model is now. To me, the thought of giving up is really not entrepreneur-like. So, I'm interested in reading what this community has to say. My overall conclusion is that there are some industries that clearly gained momentum now and can have an opportunity to contain more/better businesses in the long term: Online learning - Online fitness - Food safety consultants - Sterile delivery services - New sterile tactile technologies - Online event planning - Conferencing/Teamwork software - Remote medical services - Free or more accessible independent online content of all sorts What have your thoughts or decisions been thus far? [link] [comments]  |
| What would you say to someone wanting to start but do not know how and what exactly? Posted: 30 Mar 2020 11:25 AM PDT What are the steps one can take to go from being hesitant to actually have something up and running in a few months, a year? While having
How to get a bit of how it feels to provide value to the world and while earning a living from it? How do you get pass the terribly loud doubtful thoughts and actually get something going ? TL;DR: ignore the example *** an example Potential candidates:
[link] [comments]  |
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